Art is Magic. Look how it has taken over Steemit when it was supposed to be just another tag. But maybe Steemit was the solution for the unsolved problem every artist faces; how do I spread my word around to wider community? After all each brush stroke is one word of a 1000 written on a canvas. Sometimes an art story is written by the artist, but sometimes it writes itself. In the latter case the artist ends up serving the commands of the artwork; an artwork that will never be solely his / her child.
One month ago, I posted my painting and accompanying poem "The Scorpio's Song", one of my dearest Steemit made friends @onceuponatime asked me to paint a sequel to my Women in anticipation series which would however reflect a "catharsis" instead of the usual dark side of my subject. He didn't impose any restrictions as regards his commissioning, only to have my distinct style and to bear my "M" signature.
The challenges popped out like hot popcorn.
Firstly, making a follow up to a series of paintings that were painted years ago is very difficult because I usually paint myself and I am a person that constantly changes. I had to identify those characteristics both in me and in my painting style that have remained constant and include them in a synthesis where my current style would prevail. Of course "style" is not something I choose, it is what comes out naturally at a period of time. I use art to liberate myself from constraints, not to impose more.
Secondly, whether it is a commission or a gift, an artwork that you prepare for a specific person should be able to imprint on his emotional mind from the very first moment he/she lays eyes on it. That means you have to do some research, you have to ask questions. Of course for acquaintances made over the internet asking questions may be a big problem. You can't ask too much, you never know if the other person is indeed at ease to answer and sometimes answers are not and cannot be that straight forward. Personalities don't fit in a phrase. What would usually do the trick, intuition, is now useless. In the absence of sensible communication and the inability to observe someone during a face to face conversation, instinctive perception of one’s character is impossible.
Finally, you have to bridge the distance between two people on one canvas and do this in a harmonic way. In everyday life I find this extremely difficult; I don’t bridge differences. I eliminate them. We either agree or we don’t. If it is business and I am negotiating, I will accept to let something go only if I get something in return. If it is romance, I just let it go. I have found myself a number of times trapped in the expectation that “we have to solve this” or “we have to make it work” or “we have to compromise” only to realize that this is not romance; it’s Tromance. Terror disguised as romance. You can imagine how difficult it is for me to unite inbound information flows with the outbound in a harmonious way.
But as I said ART is MAGIC. It recreates itself using all available information; all you have to do is throw it all into your creative pot to cook on its own. So I gathered all information I had on him from various comments and e-mails and threw it on my palette.
Carl Jung believed that we all communicate on a subconscious level through archetypes. We may speak different languages but the interpretation of some symbols is common around the globe throughout the centuries. Reading various studies on mRNA imprints on DNA, I tend to support this theory more and more. And I apply it in my art too. In this specific painting the water / liquid around her reflects her emotions. It is also a relative (and cliché) term to catharsis. As @onceuponatime had requested a “catharsis”, I assumed he expected to see her not in her usual dark anguish, but in an anticipation of something good. Hope maybe? I find the words anticipation, hope and expectation to hide a negative meaning. In my mind any sort of expectation for positive outcome is a potential disaster, so I had to find a bridge between how a normal person thinks and the way I think. I read abstracts from the books he read. I looked into his family background, and more specifically the spiritual habits of his early community.
I may have gotten it wrong, but after all this reading it occurred to me that a “catharsis” could mean for both of us the end of emotion within oneself. Like a near-death- experience so to speak, where the loving bright light accepts the soul for what it is, only in our case our subject has not experienced the inevitable. She is standing on the edge of her existence ready to make a choice. She could let the emotionalism go and step into what it would be an “accepting” state of mind; less egoistic, more universal and in the end much brighter than her scattered life. A state of mind, where the different and sometimes opposite sides of her character (which I often reflect in my paintings by mixing warm tan colors with cold and dark hues) are blended together through the speed of time. This is not an easy choice, I would be very reluctant to let go of my superficial tendencies, but for our subject seeing the option is one step closer to transformation.
Is this painting a “catharsis”? I see it more as “transcendence”. This means that I have failed miserably to deliver what I was commissioned to deliver. But I am more than happy to deliver a gift to someone who has been more than supportive and friendly to me and to the whole Steem community.
@onceuponatime thanks for everything.
I am done with my 1000 words so let’s see some pictures from the process
